With the development of digital technologies, more and more functions and application types of a terminal equipment emerge, where character input, as an important auxiliary function, is widely used among multiple terminals and applications. However, in order to improve the performance and reduce the number of keys of the terminal equipment, generally, only arrow keys and few other keys are provided on an input terminal, so character input is implemented mainly through the arrow keys on such a terminal.
Currently, a frequently used character input method based on an arrow key is: selecting a character by moving a cursor. Specifically, a soft keyboard including 26 letters is presented on a display, and one cursor is provided at a default position for identifying a currently selected letter on the soft keyboard; the cursor is correspondingly moved according to triggering of four arrow keys, namely, an up arrow key, a down arrow key, a left arrow key and a right arrow key; and the letter at the cursor position is input into a text when triggering of a determined key is received.
The prior art has the following disadvantages: when a character is selected by moving a cursor through an arrow key and when the cursor is moved, it is required to perform repeated switching among all the arrow keys and to move the cursor back and forth, resulting in complex operation of the character input and low input efficiency, thereby reducing the user experience.